5 ms·

Fight against ads by giving the ad networks money and further incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots.

arealaccount 3y ago
It will drive down key advertising metrics like conversion rate, and return on ad spend. Which will lower bids for ads. But it would be easy for Google, FB, etc to filter out this traffic. Which I guess is the goal of the plugin.
nvy 3y ago
Isn't the purpose to cause ad networks to lower fee payments due to rampant click fraud and thus to destroy the business model?
- paulpauper 3y ago
  The problem is it does not destroy the model of annoying ads, it jsut makes it less profitable for publishers. It works like an auction, which is that advertisers place bids. assuming there are lots of fraudulent clicks, advertisers would notice a lower conversion rate, which would hurt ROI and advertisers would adjust by lowering bids, so the problem sorta corrects itself by adjusting to a new equilibrium of profitability. the only one hurt are the publishers and ad networks like meta/alphabet who earn less. but the evidence only shows higher ad rates despite this, not less.
  - nvy 3y ago
    I don't personally run this extension (because I've read that the fraudulent clicks are easy to detect) but supposing that the clicks from this extension were both pervasive and indistinguishable from real clicks, it would seem to me that that would cause ROI to asymptotically approach zero which would result in the collapse of ad networks as a viable business model.
    - aeyes 3y ago
      Unfortunately it just leads to more ads. 20 years ago we had way fewer ads on typical sites, today you can hardly find the text in between the ads on your average news site.
      - nvy 3y ago
        Thanks to uBlock Origin, I don't see any ads on any sites. It's great.
- cabaalis 3y ago
  I think one should be careful using the term "click fraud" in this context. Someone who installs this extension doesn't in my mind qualify to be defrauding anyone. There is no contract in place, it isn't against the law to express interest in a product, and there's no technical controls being breached illegally as the browser is just sending a request to a server.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    > Someone who installs this extension doesn't in my mind qualify to be defrauding anyone. Bluntly, it doesn't matter what you or I think -- what matters is what politicians, police, prosecutors and judges think. I don't see anything on the main github page that says the extension is intended to cause harm to the advertisers or the website, but IME governments have often not cared. And when 1M people in a country install the extension, are they acting independently or as a group? One person protesting may be legal, 1M organizing may not be protected.
    - nradov 3y ago
      Stop being vague. Which specific law do you think that might violate. Provide a citation.
      - ac29 3y ago
        The U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Resource Manual Section 941.18 U.S.C. 1343 cites these as the key elements of wire fraud: “1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money; 2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud; 3) that it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and 4) that interstate wire communications were in fact used.”
        brokenmachine 3y ago
        Since the ad agencies are the ones benefiting monetarily from this alleged fraud, would that not mean that they would be bringing about a case against themselves?
redeux 3y ago
It gives them money in the short term but it costs their clients money and makes the service overall less valuable. If everyone installed this it would basically wreck the online ads industry overnight.
- lolinder 3y ago
  But if only a few people install it then it's just a little bit more money taken from advertisers and given to ad companies. The tiny number of people who would actually consider installing an extension like this aren't going to substantially impact the perceived value of online advertising.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Marketing departments don't care. Attribution is already a joke, click fraud is the cost of doing business. Folks think most marketing departments are these sophisticated analytics driven masterminds, when it's really number go up == throw more money at it.
  - foolswisdom 3y ago
    In my experience, marketing does track the cost of user acquisition through ads, and of different ad platforms vs each other.
xypage 3y ago
It gives the networks money but it also hurts the companies actually running the ads, which would disincentivize them to do it at all, and the networks will only make more money if companies don't see a decrease in pay off for clicks and reduce their offers/stop running ads through that service altogether. That being said realistically this is too niche for nearly enough people to run it to make any significant difference on the scale of the networks themselves, it'll just obfuscate your tracking a little.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  It raises the cost per conversion, but whether that will translate to fewer ad-spend dollars isn’t clear to me. Maybe they will increase their budgets to maintain the same conversion numbers. There was also an interesting Freakonomics episode on whether ads work at all. The incentives for advertising aren’t exactly rational. What’s good for a company isn’t always good for an individual working in the ads department of that company. Plus, the money is often there whether it works or not, and advertising departments will always insist that they do.
creata 3y ago
> incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots At what place would this incentivize captchas? It can't be when you click on the ad, because users would just close the window.

It will drive down key advertising metrics like conversion rate, and return on ad spend. Which will lower bids for ads. But it would be easy for Google, FB, etc to filter out this traffic. Which I guess is the goal of the plugin.

nvy 3y ago

Isn't the purpose to cause ad networks to lower fee payments due to rampant click fraud and thus to destroy the business model?

paulpauper 3y ago
The problem is it does not destroy the model of annoying ads, it jsut makes it less profitable for publishers. It works like an auction, which is that advertisers place bids. assuming there are lots of fraudulent clicks, advertisers would notice a lower conversion rate, which would hurt ROI and advertisers would adjust by lowering bids, so the problem sorta corrects itself by adjusting to a new equilibrium of profitability. the only one hurt are the publishers and ad networks like meta/alphabet who earn less. but the evidence only shows higher ad rates despite this, not less.
- nvy 3y ago
  I don't personally run this extension (because I've read that the fraudulent clicks are easy to detect) but supposing that the clicks from this extension were both pervasive and indistinguishable from real clicks, it would seem to me that that would cause ROI to asymptotically approach zero which would result in the collapse of ad networks as a viable business model.
  - aeyes 3y ago
    Unfortunately it just leads to more ads. 20 years ago we had way fewer ads on typical sites, today you can hardly find the text in between the ads on your average news site.
    - nvy 3y ago
      Thanks to uBlock Origin, I don't see any ads on any sites. It's great.
cabaalis 3y ago
I think one should be careful using the term "click fraud" in this context. Someone who installs this extension doesn't in my mind qualify to be defrauding anyone. There is no contract in place, it isn't against the law to express interest in a product, and there's no technical controls being breached illegally as the browser is just sending a request to a server.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > Someone who installs this extension doesn't in my mind qualify to be defrauding anyone. Bluntly, it doesn't matter what you or I think -- what matters is what politicians, police, prosecutors and judges think. I don't see anything on the main github page that says the extension is intended to cause harm to the advertisers or the website, but IME governments have often not cared. And when 1M people in a country install the extension, are they acting independently or as a group? One person protesting may be legal, 1M organizing may not be protected.
  - nradov 3y ago
    Stop being vague. Which specific law do you think that might violate. Provide a citation.
    - ac29 3y ago
      The U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Resource Manual Section 941.18 U.S.C. 1343 cites these as the key elements of wire fraud: “1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money; 2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud; 3) that it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and 4) that interstate wire communications were in fact used.”
      - brokenmachine 3y ago
        Since the ad agencies are the ones benefiting monetarily from this alleged fraud, would that not mean that they would be bringing about a case against themselves?

redeux 3y ago

It gives them money in the short term but it costs their clients money and makes the service overall less valuable. If everyone installed this it would basically wreck the online ads industry overnight.

lolinder 3y ago
But if only a few people install it then it's just a little bit more money taken from advertisers and given to ad companies. The tiny number of people who would actually consider installing an extension like this aren't going to substantially impact the perceived value of online advertising.
candiddevmike 3y ago
Marketing departments don't care. Attribution is already a joke, click fraud is the cost of doing business. Folks think most marketing departments are these sophisticated analytics driven masterminds, when it's really number go up == throw more money at it.
- foolswisdom 3y ago
  In my experience, marketing does track the cost of user acquisition through ads, and of different ad platforms vs each other.

xypage 3y ago

It gives the networks money but it also hurts the companies actually running the ads, which would disincentivize them to do it at all, and the networks will only make more money if companies don't see a decrease in pay off for clicks and reduce their offers/stop running ads through that service altogether. That being said realistically this is too niche for nearly enough people to run it to make any significant difference on the scale of the networks themselves, it'll just obfuscate your tracking a little.

janalsncm 3y ago
It raises the cost per conversion, but whether that will translate to fewer ad-spend dollars isn’t clear to me. Maybe they will increase their budgets to maintain the same conversion numbers. There was also an interesting Freakonomics episode on whether ads work at all. The incentives for advertising aren’t exactly rational. What’s good for a company isn’t always good for an individual working in the ads department of that company. Plus, the money is often there whether it works or not, and advertising departments will always insist that they do.

creata 3y ago

> incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots At what place would this incentivize captchas? It can't be when you click on the ad, because users would just close the window.